Pages

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

School Yard Fences

Why do schools have fences? To keep children in or to keep intruders out? When I started primary school, the school yard was open to the street. There was also a big ditch that we would run down towards the street. Later on, they filled in the ditch and put a fence there - separating the playground area from the road. I thought it was for child safety to stay off the street.

School yard fences are chain-link. The process was developed in England in 1844. It is a staple of fence building around the world, and comes with many names: wire netting, wire-mesh fence, chain-wire fence, cyclone fence, hurricane fence, or diamond-mesh fence.

Fences have been with us since prehistoric times. What are the famous fences around the world?

1. The Great Wall of China is not technically a fence...but it seems to be number 1 on the list - it is 13,000 miles long.

2. The Dingo Fence of Australia is next - 3,400 miles long. The Guinness Book of Records considers this the longest fence in the world.

3. The Fence at Buckingham Palace - beauty is its distinction rather than length.

4. Aquarium Fence in Turkey - another art fence with sea creatures.

5. Lock Fence in Pari's Pont des Arts - the weight of the thousands of locks on a 6.5-foot section of the bridge's fencing collapsed.

6. Bra Fence in New Zealand - hundred of brassieres mysteriously appeared on a stretch of wire farm fencing in 1999 becoming a tourist attraction

7. The Fence of Carnegie Mellon University is considered "the most painted object in the world" by the Guinness Book of World Records. The article on this fence is HERE. A wooden fence it seems to have a history of being painted for more than 70 years. It had 609 coats of paint between 1993 and 2007. It collapsed under the weight of the paint so was rebuilt in concrete. Painting continues.

There is one repeatable joke about fences - I have given it the /e to indicate both genders on this blond/e joke:

Why did the blond/e climb the chain-link fence?To see what was on the other side.

Today's purple flower is the Paulownia Tree. It is an invasive tree further south in the U.S. , but here it isn't very hardy, so is considered special. There's a large one at Vineland Research Station at the Foreign Affair Winery. Let's see if it blooms this year.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

I am a photographer exploring two realms - the magic and wonder of plants, gardens and flowers in the natural world, and the everyday decays in the urban environment which are turned into abstract images.